


Minette

by DaScribbla



Category: Atomic Blonde (2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character Study, Dom/sub Undertones, F/F, Fix-It of Sorts, Introspection, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Relationship Study
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-24
Updated: 2017-09-24
Packaged: 2019-01-04 17:21:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12173370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DaScribbla/pseuds/DaScribbla
Summary: Delphine knows there's a person inside Lorraine somewhere, behind the cold words and the flat stares.





	Minette

Lorraine comes across as hollow as the empty champagne bottles strewn around the hotel suite, but Delphine forgives her for it every time because she knows that there’s a person in there somewhere, behind the cold words and flat stares.

Here’s the problem with being Lorraine’s woman—one has to learn to turn a blind eye. Sometimes she doesn’t come home for days, or weeks, or months, and Delphine has long since learned not to question it. She knows she won’t get a straight answer. 

“But then, none of your answers will be straight, will they?” she says one evening when she’s in a teasing mood and wants to take the piss out of her. Lorraine rolls her eyes and lights a cigarette as she smirks. Delphine doesn’t know how she does it; she seems to subsist entirely off alcohol, nicotine, and some deeply rooted spitefulness the cause of which Delphine can’t begin to guess.

“Get over here.” Lorraine jerks her head, tossing her hair—it glows in the lamplight like snow—and Delphine doesn’t waste a second in sitting, not beside her on the leather couch, but directly on her lap. 

She wraps her arms around her neck, brushes their noses together. “You missed me?” she purrs. With an elegant gesture, Lorraine reaches over to stub out her cigarette in her glass of scotch. 

“Definitely missed part of you,” she murmurs. 

Her accent is hard to pin down. It wanders around the globe and conjures up all sorts of images in Delphine’s mind: one moment tall metal skyscrapers in New York or Chicago; next rainy London streets; then Berlin, champagne spraying like something vulgar while the wall fell; then the cocktail of sweet cigarette smoke and Sauvignon that made Delphine think regretfully of home. 

She switches to French. “You want to become reacquainted?”

“Of course I do.” Lorraine doesn’t miss a bit of grammar as she makes the admittedly small linguistic hurdle. And then she calls her _minette_ and tells her to take her panties off. 

Being Lorraine’s woman means orgasms—a lot of orgasms. She fucks in the manner Delphine imagines she also fights. Really, she’s only seen her in action once, and she’d been flickering in and out of consciousness at the time. Just aware enough to see Lorraine grab the lamp off her nightstand and nearly brain Percival with it. And then she’d been kneeling by her, muttering things, crazy things, _good girl, breathe, breathe, breathe, don’t you dare close your eyes._

Delphine’s only human; as much as she enjoys letting Lorraine keep control, she likes to wonder what things would be like the other way around. When Lorraine pins her wrists over her head and tells her to keep them there, Delphine thinks that her girlfriend (lover, mistress, keeper?) probably _would_ like it if their roles were reversed, but she’d never mention it. Lorraine has a reputation to maintain. 

Or maybe she’s afraid of giving up control, even for a moment. Even if she’d like to. 

One day, she’ll have to ask.

But this is nice, too. Really, really nice. 

 

Their evenings don’t always go like this. A month ago, Lorraine stumbled in at two in the morning and, pausing only to rifle the kitchen for whatever liquor was left, stormed into the bathroom and started the bath. Silent and motionless, tying her dressing gown around herself, Delphine watched her strip off—and her bruises were huge, ugly, blackish green, where she wasn’t covered in blood or dirt—and sink into the cold bath with the bottle. 

“I want the methadone,” was all she said. And: “Call Room Service and tell them to bring up champagne. With lots of ice.”

Delphine watched her storm around the suite for days, smoking sullenly, barely speaking. Part of being Lorraine’s woman was knowing when not to ask.

 

“How was your day?” she asks now, as Lorraine wraps her arms around her.

“A KGB agent tried to kill me,” she said, blasé as ever. 

Delphine laid her head on her breastbone. “And?”

“She didn’t.” She strokes her hair back. “You written any?” Delphine hums. “Read me some.”

There’s no escape in Delphine’s poetry: her verses are all about paranoia and blood and cold anonymous cities where no one investigates the gunshots. It’s her way of coping. Getting out doesn’t mean you really leave, after all. But Lorraine leans her head back on the pillows, a slight smile on her face like it’s a lullaby. 

Once, just to fuck with her, Delphine read her a different poet, but Lorraine opened her eyes and said, “Did you really think I wouldn’t recognize Sylvia Plath.”

Delphine shut her computer with a snap, grinning. “Just making sure.”

“Of what?”

“That you were paying attention.”

Lorraine said, “You write with French syntax.”

“Sue me; it’s too much work to put the adjective before the noun.”

And Lorraine actually laughed at that, a genuine, throaty sound that made Delphine’s chest turn warm and cold all at once. 

 

Being Lorraine’s woman means learning not to get attached, getting attached anyway, and then spending long hours convincing herself that she’ll soldier on if Lorraine doesn’t come home next time.

 

She watches her while she sleeps. It’s strange, seeing her so vulnerable, like watching a napping tigress. A furrow in her brow, her hair nearly the same color as the pillow. When the nightmares arrive—as they always do, it’s a rare night when neither of them wakes up clammy and disoriented—Delphine presses close, her knees behind the backs of Lorraine’s, her chest against her back, arms around her, and hums “Week-end à Rome” to her until she settles down again. 

Lorraine rolls over in her arms and kisses her. She didn’t take her makeup off, so she tastes like lipstick and beneath that scotch and cigarette smoke. Delphine closes her eyes and thinks of gray Paris skies. 

“I miss you when I’m not here,” Lorraine whispers, barely on the edge of hearing. 

“Then why don’t you stay?” It’s a rhetorical question. 

“I should, shouldn’t I?” She doesn’t punctuate it with a smirk or anything. Just looks at her, cool and yet not at all.

Delphine kisses her again as she props herself up, one hand making a deep valley in the pillow by Lorraine’s head. Her wrist has a handprint on it. Getting in bed with someone like Lorraine requires a readiness for force that’s not quite proportional to what’s required.

“Crazy kid,” Lorraine murmurs. 

“You’re crazy, too. You’re just better at hiding it.”

“Well-matched, then.”

“Well-matched.”

 

Lorraine leaves that morning. Delphine definitely doesn’t sneak glances at her passport before she leaves. 

Being her woman means feeling like they leave each other more than they meet. 

Delphine watches her from the balcony as she climbs into a cab, bound for some far off place. Istanbul, if plans haven’t changed between now and five minutes ago. She will go and do what she has to do.

And she will leave a trail of bodies, get bloodied and bruised and a bit more fucked up with each one, but she’ll find her way back to her door. As always.

Delphine sips orange juice out of a wine glass and watches the black cab crawl away. 

**Author's Note:**

> For the record, "minette" is French for "kitty."
> 
> I'm on Tumblr @williamshakennotstirred. If you liked this, please tell me.


End file.
